Microsoft’s new Quincy data center is in a barn

The new data center Microsoft is building in Quincy, Wash., will look quite a bit different from the company’s 500,000-square-foot facility next door.

Courtesy of Microsoft

Timmons wrote that the new Quincy data center will look similar to this tractor shed in his home town of Mt. Pulaski, Ill.

It’ll look like a barn.

“The building will actually resemble slightly more modern versions of the tractor sheds I spent so much time around during my childhood in rural Illinois,” Kevin Timmons,
Microsoft’s general manager of Datacenter Services, wrote in a blog post this week.

The barn-like structure will hold a bunch of Microsoft’s “data centers in a box,” which look like shipping containers crammed with computer servers and cooling systems. Dubbed IT Pre-Assembled Components, or ITPAC, the units combine to make up what Microsoft calls “modular” data centers. You can learn more about ITPACs here.

Back to the Quincy barns — here’s an excerpt from Timmons’ blog post:

The building’s utilitarian appearance belies its many hidden innovations. The structure is virtually transparent to ambient outdoor conditions, allowing us to essentially place our servers and storage outside in the cool air while still protecting it from the elements. The interior layout is specifically designed to allow us to further innovate in the ways that we deploy equipment in future phases of the project. And, like any good barn, the protective shell serves to keep out critters and tumbleweeds.

Additional phases have been planned for the Quincy site and will be built based on demand. Those phases will incorporate even more cutting-edge methods to deploy servers and storage in ways that have never been seen before in the industry.

Phase 1 of the new Quincy center is set to open in early 2011, Timmons wrote. Microsoft plans to open more modular data centers this year in Virginia and Iowa.